


Envy, Through a Microscope

by destinationtoast



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Crack, Humor, Love Triangles, M/M, Other, The Smudge, Translation Available
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-03
Updated: 2013-08-03
Packaged: 2017-12-22 08:09:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/910897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/destinationtoast/pseuds/destinationtoast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fill for the following prompt from <a href="http://prideandprejudiceandcheese.tumblr.com/">prideandprejudiceandcheese</a>: "a johnlock fic from the POV of Sherlock's microscope, with perhaps the microscope experiencing jealousy when Sherlock looks up to gaze at John."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Envy, Through a Microscope

**Author's Note:**

  * For [prideandprejudiceandcheese (thefinalproblem)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefinalproblem/gifts).



> The title is from this quote by Josh Billings: “Love looks through a telescope; envy, through a microscope.”
> 
> There's now a [French translation](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6883897) available, thanks to ElieBluebell! :D

The whole point of being a microscope is to focus downward. To gather and focus light upon The Observed, creating the perfect image. That is the sole purpose of such a device, and one at which the microscope has always excelled.

It is with a deep initial reluctance, then, that the microscope finds its attention drawn upward, toward The Observer. The Observer should be irrelevant to the microscope. And yet, The Observer is so focused, so objective, so empirical, that he is rather like a scientific instrument himself. And the attention he lavishes upon the microscope is overwhelming. The microscope initially admires The Observer. But later — after all his long and attentive gazes into its ocular lenses, after the gentle way he positions the slides into place, after the thorough way he massages lubricant into its every moving part — that admiration grows into something more.

They’ve built a partnership of many years by the time The Smudge appears on the scene. Outside of the narrow focal area of the microscope — and The Observer, whose eyes and fingers he knows so intimately — the whole world is a large, and largely undifferentiated, blur to the microscope. The Smudge is a straw blur perched on a pink blur wrapped in a wide variety of multi-color blurs — the multi-color blurs vary from day to day and range from mindnumbingly dull to frankly hideous. Amidst all the other blurs, the microscope would never have noticed The Smudge, but for the problem.

The problem is that, when The Smudge is near, The Observer’s attention is not. When the The Smudge is in the proximity of the microscope, even when The Observer continues to gaze into the lenses, his tension and hesitant finger movements reveal that he is wholly fixated upon The Smudge.

It’s not fair. What can The Smudge even do? Can he conduct light? Almost certainly not. Is he made of sleek, beautifully engineered metal, and perfectly enmeshed gears? His squishy pink blobbiness tells a different story. Can his opaque form even magnify anything? The microscope knows this to be impossible.

The microscope hopes that this is but a passing crush on the part of The Observer, that soon his attention shall refocus upon his original love, his partner in science. It continues to hope until the day that The Smudge approaches The Observer while he perches at the scope, cups The Observer’s face, and tilts it towards his own. As The Smudge and The Observer interlock non-ocular facial components, The Observer’s flailing arm brushes against the microscope’s coarse focus knob, and the whole world shifts to blur.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading (and for leaving kudos or comments, if you're so inspired)! If you enjoyed this, here are some [other works you might like](http://destinationtoast.tumblr.com/fic#toc).


End file.
